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Dinosaurs in time for Christmas!

I was walking along the corridor at the back of Te Papa the other day and spotted these boxes….

Dinosaur boxes in the corridor. Copyright Te Papa

You see some quite strange things out the back of Te Papa (it could be a blog all of its own “Out back Te Papa” ) but this was one of the better ones.

Further investigation revealed that the dinosaurs had escaped from their boxes and were now living in the workshop next door. Some staff got to meet them…

Meeting a dinosaur in the workshop. Copyright Te Papa

Since then the dinosaurs have been on the move. If you look carefully you’ll see their heads poking above the barrier in the Awesome Forces exhibition on Level Two.

From tomorrow you’ll be able to get a proper look at these scary looking raptors, which are part of a makeover of this exhibition. The two dinosaur models come from Germany and are of a dromaeosaur species, Deinonychus.

No one has found fossils of Deinonychus in New Zealand … yet. But they have been found in Antarctica, Australia and other parts of Gondwana so it’s likely that they did live here once.

Did I mention the unusual packing that the dinosaur models arrived in? – nicely padded bra inserts to protect those sharp claws…